Difficult sales of melon; good market for citrus and overseas top fruit

The sales of citrus and overseas top fruit is going well at the moment. The sales of melons, however, aren't doing so well. Watermelons are sold for a kilo price of 40 cents at the moment, and the Galia melons are sold for 2 Euro. "There are too many and there is too little demand," says an importer.

"But there's light on the horizon. The season in Almeria is completely finished, but there seem to be less melons coming from Murcia. The past two weeks the supply was on schedule due to the warm weather and last week there were melons harvested, which were planned for this week and next week. But now the big boom is over. Cantaloupe-melons are hardly available. The market for yellow melons remains bad. From Murcia, which hasn't really started yet, there are good melons arriving, because the quality of the yellow melons from Almeria was very weak.

"Of course, the melon sales are very dependent on the weather, and we've not had a few consecutive warm days lately. But if we get warmer weather, I could see an impulse for the sales of cherries, strawberries, peaches and nectarines," concludes the importer. "The sales of peaches is decreasing by the year, but there is a rise of flat peaches (paraguayos) and nectarines (platerinas). I expect these products to overshadow ordinary peaches and nectarines on the long term."